Page 45 - The Channel Issue 2 2010

THE CHANNEL | ISSUE 2 2010 | 45

athletics looks great, you are really close to the action. Also impressive is ballet, 3D does add something to it. It's a mixture of sport, cultural and movies that will sustain 3D. Until the volume of 3D content builds up, a channel may well show chunks of HD 2D output, then a stereo 3D film, and then it will go back to 2D. And some of the viewers are already saying 'I wouldn't like to watch six hours of stereo'. In my opinion, the smartest way of using 3D is when it actually adds something to the action – just because you have got it doesn’t mean you have to use it all the time.

Any interesting projects in the pipeline?

Last year we acquired a content management system (CMS) which is a sophisticated web publishing system. Vizrt were early pioneers of the concept of template graphics – tomorrow's news graphics are often much the same as today's graphics and so journalists only need to change those few elements that are different. Much the same could be said of publishing for news web sites. By integrating our CMS with Viz we can enable our broadcaster

customers to repurpose their TV graphics content for their website. This is what many of our customers are working towards. A classic example is the BBC West One project where the news operations for TV, radio, online and the BBC World Service are all converging within one building. All the different platforms will be located together, with everyone able to access the same assets, and therefore each facet of the news technology must be able to talk to one another. This is what we are working on now. The expression that best describes it is integrated conversion. We have our asset management system, called Viz Ardome, which enables all the media content to be stored, edited, transcoded and accessed very easily, and we bought a new company called Adactus that converts optimised web content for mobile devices and can also deliver high-quality video from a mobile phone back to base for broadcast, including all the metadata.

How are you helping broadcasters get content onto mobiles?

The clever guys from Adactus have developed an automated system to

enable broadcasters to optimise their video and their web content for any make of mobile phone. So the idea is that when a phone links to that optimised site, information is exchanged between the phone and the media server so it knows all the technical features of that phone. Then, in real time, it will transcode stored HD video from a broadcaster into exactly the right video format, aspect ratio, resolution, etc to get it onto that specific mobile device for the best viewing experience. And likewise it will do the same for any website by optimising it for any mobile phone.

What would you like to happen in the next 12 months?

This year, I would like the company to deliver really good results commercially, to prove that we can carry on Bjarne's legacy in the way he would want us to. I am pleased to say from our results so far that it looks like I am going to get my wish.

Rex Jenkins, thank you very much.

TECHNOLOGY | THE CHANNEL

Main Image: Vizrt 3D graphics demonstration Top left: Vizrt 3D graphics on screen at Al Jazeera English Bottom left: NRK’s election night programme illustrated by Vizrt 3D graphics

Vizrt CEO Bjarne Berg died in May of this year at the age of 59. Martin Burkhalter is the new CEO.